Red Faction Armageddon Diaries Part Three

This is my ongoing exploration of the Red Faction Universe. Whether you’re a newcomer or an old-goer, I hope to make this something you can read along with and enjoy. I continue Red Faction Armageddon.

After freeing monsters from the bowels of Mars, Mason had done what he could to help people escape to Bastion and safety…

Well, it turned out that Bastion wasn’t that safe as the auto-turrets had no power, and required some batteries -- and muggins here had to go retrieve some. Not only that, but they were scattered about the place through many, many seemingly endless waves of critters, creatures and monsters…

Given the action-heavy nature of this game compared to the others, I’ve actually played much longer than usual to write what I have done so far…

There were nests, portals and hives, creatures that spat, things that clawed and a hell of a lot of blood got spilt. I rescued three people who were trapped between two force fields, and that’s about all that happened other than the shooting, magnet gunning and explosions.

So far so good...

I returned to Bastion which was still as under siege as it was when I left, only to find out that the food was running low and there was no water. Feeling responsible for being fooled by Hale into freeing the beasts, Mason volunteered to fix the water pumps.

Again, waves of enemies stood against me and my objective, with several nests scattered around the first pump room. Once they were gone, my Nano-Forge made short work of rebuilding the complex machinery. Water returned to Bastion, but it was “strange” -- not a word you want in relation to potable water. The corporal (I don’t remember his name, and everyone in the Red Faction looks identical with bald heads…) was taking a team to check the pumping station, and Mason decided to tag along -- or rather catch up because they managed to get well ahead of him…

I went down the ladder despite S.A.M. warning that the area was huge, and the likelihood of finding the corporal was slim. As you might expect, a few short meters into the area I was attacked, this time by a creature capable of turning invisible! Luckily I had been warned to turn back by the corporal because they had found “a new type of monster”, and promptly ignored the direct order…

This is a random shot as I keep forgetting to take screenshots...

I had to repair a lot of the walkways as I progressed through. Due to the amount of times I was attacked and responded with explosives or my newly-purchased nano-rifle (which ate the ground/walls as much as the enemies), the majority of the structural damage was my own fault, but some of it wasn’t. I followed the beacons set out by the Red Faction unit who had been massacred along the way, as if they knew I’d need to find them.

The next interesting thing that happened was needing to activate a bridge which moved very slowly, and made me wonder why the Red Faction would cross the bridge and then retract it. Because, of course, it resulted in five minutes of being attacked, and using the magnet gun to throw monsters at walls and each other.

I then had to repair an elevator which was already at the top where I needed to reach. S.A.M. recommended I upgrade my gauntlet to fire a burst of nanites, which I set out to do with total resistance coming up against me. Once I was eventually at the top, I found the corporal who was dying -- unsurprisingly given the fact that he was a member of the Red Faction and not the protagonist. They don’t have long lives…

"Time to get purified!" - rejected tagline for this mission

It was up to me to reactivate the purification plant, so off I went. I wasn’t attacked between the elevator and the plant, so went right inside and turned it back on. Only to find that it was infected by the creatures, and the only antidote: destroy the purification plant.

With rockets and liberal use of the magnet gun, I brought the plant down around my ears, mainly because being crushed by a hundred tons of concrete seemed safer than going outside and getting mauled to death by the dozens of creatures which had suddenly appeared. Luckily falling cement and explosives worked on them as well as it had on the plant, once it was mere debris.

With that sorted, S.A.M. warned me that Bastion was reporting a large number of violent attacks, and plotted a course back to base...